The hairy muscleman’s eyes widen, but I lift my hand and fill it with power, the doormen backing away from the sunspot like primitive men before an apparition from beyond, though they have no particular fear of me per se. It’s club policy not to piss off the masks. As Zephyr, I would have my own room here, but this is enough as I curtsy and then sashay through, the stoic-looking Atlas scooping the chain aside for me.
The entry is through a velvet darkness flavored by dry ice and recycled air, a kind of grandmotherly vaginal walkway into the diminished black atrium within a single level amphitheater, a few ground lights and more than a few hidden ultraviolets to throw an ethereal glow across proceedings. Apart from a dozen-strong selection of London’s finest gold-digging hoes, only a few British supers are partying in full costume, Shade among them. She moves with an athlete’s grace, bumping and grinding with another black girl and a Finnish chick white enough to be damned near translucent. I cut in on her escapades by putting my hand on her ass.
“We need to talk,” I say to her.
“I came here to dance.”
“With all this chaos going on in the world?”
Shade shrugs and looks at me sideways. I am still a stranger to her.
“London’s burning and I don’t care.”
I nod and can’t really fault her on that one.
“I’m a friend of Zephyr’s,” I say. “He said I could ask you for a favor.”
“You’re one of Zephyr’s hoes?”
“Hey, takes one to know one,” I say and definitely commit to trying to not ever let Shade know this was really me.
Shade growls low in her chest – a noise at once threatening and sexy. The fact it carries above the choreographed aural rape bleeding from the speakers at this moment also attests to Shade’s gravity as I suddenly remember the first time we met and the ensuing swathe of destruction.
History’s got a habit of repeating.
*
SHADE BACKHANDS ME almost dismissively, but her eyes flare wide as I stand unmoved, catching the offending wrist as the slap echoes in the static-charged space between us. Shade twists, again under-estimating Cusp’s strength as she snarls to force the issue. Her other hand grabs my wrist as she grapples me, unafraid of elbowing me in the cheek as she pulls herself free of my penitentiary grasp. I seize her by the back of the head, thousand-dollar haircut ravaged as I pull her ear back beside my gritted teeth.
“I said we need to talk,” I hiss at her. “Now’s not the time or place for this shit.”
“Get your fucking hands off me,” Shade glowers.
I do so, but add also, “Are you going to behave yourself? I’m not one of these floozies.”
Shade makes a little performance of dusting herself off. The models and the other girls hide at the far side of the dance floor, presumably thinking Gorilla Man, X-Ray and Mistress Bizarre will protect them. Not the case. Those masks back away as well, leaving Shade and I literally center stage.
“Your accent gives you away. You from Atlantic City?”
“There’s been an orchestrated attack,” I say to her. “I came here to get information on who’s behind it all.”
“Bitch, what are you pulling my hair for?”
“You think Atlantic City’s a natural calamity? This is a man-made disaster,” I say to her. “It’s an engineered disaster, Shade. They got control of the whole city. All its systems. They had the heroes arrested or deputized so they all came down with the Hitler Youth.”
“You sound delusional,” Shade says with staged disdain. “How do you know Zephyr and why’d he tell you to come to me?”
“I guess he thought you’d be doing something to make a difference.”
“It’s the fall of Rome,” Shade says. “England’s dream is ending. Good riddance.”
“This is only a mild panic. Everything will be under control in a few days –”
“If Atlantic City weren’t a charred wreck,” Shade snaps back at me. “The world’s biggest economy got snuffed out like a light. The globe’s off its fucking axis, girl. What’s your name?”
“Cusp.”
“I can see why he likes you.”
“He said much the same thing to me about you,” I lie sweetly.
It works. Shade gives a slight grin and lowers her gaze.
“OK sugar, you’re OK with me. Let’s go some place quiet and have a drink and you can fill me in on your problems.”
“You’re not trying to seduce me, are you?”
“I don’t know. Do you want me to?”
“I really don’t think this is the right time.”
My transformation is nearly complete, because next thing I know Shade and I are fucking in a nearby hotel room and then it’s mid-morning.
*
“OK, SO WHAT’S what?” Shade asks blearily as she sits up and lights a joint, haggard yet beautiful in the unpleasant morning light.
I guess she never got her place on the docks repaired after the last little fracas accompanying one of my sleepovers, because the hotel suite has a lived-in feel, with stacks of books and various other indicators of interest around the room. I pick up the closest tome and read its entrancing title about quantum field dynamics and shrug.
“You’re really into this stuff?”
“I get bored easily.”
“OK.”
“So what do you need?” Shade asks.
I’m conscious that we are really hours past the best time for me to admit my true identity. I work that hesitation into my ongoing performance and try not to think about the sweetest of my most recent sins as Shade sits up and slowly dresses in a peach night gown.
“I need you to muster as many masks as you can manage,” I say.
“That’s no small order.”
“We can establish contact with another team being readied back in the States.”
“How do we do that?”
“I’ll fly back,” I answer. “I don’t know if our teleporter’s alive.”
“Shit. Sounds tough. How’s the Zee-man?”
“Things over there are pretty weird. I hope you get the chance to ask him yourself.”
“I don’t see much point in gathering the troops,” Shade says. “We don’t have the same culture of crime-fighting as you do over there. Less guns, you know?”
“I know. The Euro scene’s more about cosmetics and accessories and the contracts for both, right?”
“Hey, do I look like some kind of bimbo runway mask to you?”
“You tried to get a singing career using your powers, didn’t you?”
“I was young and stupid. Not my point.”
I stand, trying to look dignified with just the bed sheet covering me.
“Just do what you can,” I say. “It might make up for doing nothing up ‘til now.”
“Jesus, for a sweet-tasting woman, you’re kind of a bitch, know that?”
I sneer a smile back.
“Also takes one to know one, right?”
Zephyr 22.10 “The Return Of The King”
I FEEL LIKE I’ve just shat out some disgustingly well-fed parasite I never knew I had. Alone again, I stare out at the boundless Atlantic with less enthusiasm than I should probably muster at this point. I am used to zipping across continents at top speed, almost disrupting time and space in my faster days (well, give me a little license), but flying as Cusp feels like I’m towing a camper trailer. The effort alone to maintain alertness as she flies against winds for which her body and her powers weren’t designed slaps me to attention time and time again, the mundanity spiced up with moments of freefall and such fun activities as failing to negotiate a cloud of seagulls (that’s the definitive group noun AFAIC), having to circumnavigate an electrical storm (made more ironic by those conditions once boosting my abilities), and the endless constant squinting against the wind drying my eyeballs. Also my dark passenger doesn’t conveniently volunteer to take over and send us to old New York at warp speed six, so it behooves me to endure one of the more painful
experiences of my recent existence with an epic twelve-hour crossing to Twilight’s isle.
It’s not exactly the return of the king. It’s crapping down with rain as I land and stumble headlong exhausted into one of the manor’s stone walls. A group of Mafiosos in see-through raincoats hurry out to check if I need spraying down with Uzis, but apparently I’m not much of a threat because they lower their unsilenced weapons before I even take breath to explain my purpose.
“If you came for Twilight, he ain’t here,” the first guy drawls.
Twilight’s nonplussed and already fat-looking guards shrug to each other and me as they explain “the boss” hasn’t been around for days.
“He didn’t come back? What about the . . . you know . . . the business?”
The chimps look nervously between each other and one tries to shit test me by asking why “a dame” like me even wants to know. I gather business isn’t good, just as Baroness suggested.
“Did you really just call me a ‘dame’?” I ask the guy. “You picked up the wrong script, you fucking amateur.”
I’m a bit done fighting for the respect of shit-heels I could flash-fry in instants. For their benefit, I stalk away from the house guards like a demigoddess of the thundery conditions now gathering force around the Newfoundland isle and the crepuscular manor, but the truth is this dramatic weather is enough to ground me as well.
A hundred paces out into the storm I curse loudly and hunch over, hands on my thighs, about as much as I can manage without just laying down in the slush and going sleepy bo-boes. Then of course it starts pelting down, rain like the blows of some angry child. Apparently I stand out there for a while, because one of the Mafiosos eventually comes and stands over me with an umbrella.
“Whyn’t you come inside and get warm, miss?”
“Why do you sound like such an old-timey gangster?” I ask him tiredly.
“Guess I’m just a product of that era, see.”
I look up through rain-lank hair and am glad to see the young bastard grinning sardonically.
“I don’t bed minions,” I sneer as I stand and let him play guard for me.
“That’s cool,” he says. “I don’t dig the boss’s slops either.”
I stop and swivel in one move, alert yet fetching – though I can’t help admire the line, at least, you know . . . guy to guy. But I have a role to play here. Plus the remark stings all the more for its ring of truth.
“Guy, you’re a fuckin’ asshole.”
“That indeed I am, miss,” he says. “Come in and we’ll have the maids set you up a room. They ain’t got fuck all else to do. And the others are probably waiting for you.”
*
THEY ARE A sore and sorry lot, despite the benefit of a few days’ rest, but I am relieved for far beyond mere selfish reasons to see my comrades assembled. A few new faces are in the group too, which gives a fluttery lift to my defeated spirits.
Seeker is first to leap from one of the drawing room’s overstuffed couches and rush at me, a gamut of emotions passing through her clear features. Although she wears little more than a dressing gown, I feel her metallic accessories as she crushes me in a welcome hug.
“Oh my God Joe, we weren’t even sure you made it out,” Loren says.
“Easy with the Joe thing, hey princess?”
Admittedly I’m beaming too, and drinking in the scent wafting from Loren like from a crisp apple to enervate my limbic male urges, studying her translucent nape as she turns back to the still-responding room. Undoubtedly the new gizmo has cleaned and repaired whatever damage the drugs and I did between us to the ex-Seeker, now truly a Seeker once again.
Portal is the only one still dressed in full superhero get-up and he gets up and stands hovering in a way that trips my mental illness alert button, though in effect all the masked and goggle-wearing teleporter does is stand agitatedly changing from one foot to the other as Loren keeps speaking and Sentinel, the Enigma and Mistress Snow stand and adopt pretty poses. It’s awkward because almost everybody except for me and Loren have drinks in their hands, so I’m not exactly sure they were waiting up just for little ol’ me as the doorman said. With them is the presumably rescued Legion and three other figures more clearly marked by their post-apocalyptic ordeal than my erstwhile colleagues.
The other two I don’t immediately recognize, but the coltish figure in the grimy white-and- black bodysuit can only be my daughter’s girlfriend Syzygy.
Loren is in the middle of explaining something to Portal in a voice reserved for retarded people, telling him he can believe her now he’s not responsible for my death. I’m still drinking this in when Syzygy speaks loudly over the whole room in that gushy and frankly quite annoying young braying donkey manic pixie dream girl voice of hers.
“Oh shit, it’s Windsong’s dad! Hey Zephyr, what’s up? I went on that scouting mission like you said. There’s still wi-fi in Canada.”
Everyone stops. Of course, none of the others apart from Seeker know my dirty little old man’s secret. At first they look at newcomer Syzygy like she’s mistaken, but the girl shrugs an effortlessly convincing dismissal.
“No big secret guys. He told me all about it. Some crazy psychic bitch hijacked your body, right?”
I wonder at that moment about Legion’s moldering clones and give a slow and weary sigh.
“I think we discussed that being top secret, remember Daria?”
“My name’s not Daria.”
Sentinel steps into the middle of the rug like a true ass-hat.
“Zephyr?” he intones in that newsreel voice of his. “Is she telling the truth? You said your name was Cusp.”
“It was easier than trying to explain everything,” I answer slowly. “It wasn’t relevant and you wouldn’t understand half of it anyway.”
Sentinel moves up close, Seeker stepping aside but with mild concern as the old predator invades my personal space like he never would if he were dealing with a woman – or maybe he would, which only makes the low and threatening sneer all the more sinister.
“I thought we had respect, Zephyr.”
“We did,” I answer. “I’m guessing with emphasis on the past tense.”
“I can hear you now behind that bitch voice,” he replies. “Jesus, I don’t know why I didn’t spot it before. I figured Cusp didn’t like me much. That was you, was it?”
“I guess I didn’t have the benefit of a woman’s perspective before.”
“You sassy cunt,” Sentinel says.
I can’t tell if he’s saying that to me as a man or a woman – and yes there’s a difference, and yes, I don’t care for it much either way.
“Listen gramps,” I tell him. “You did a good thing setting up with that foundation. I know you’ve got relevance deprivation syndrome, but no matter how long your powers let you live, you’re already a relic from a bygone age. And thank fuck for that.”
Feminine debating skills deployed, I change tack without chance of reply.
“I came here to help save the city – if not the world. Do you think you’re still any good at that, or do we just have to keep watching that godawful fucking Christmas special of yours with Leo Sayer and Gene Wilder for the rest of our fucking lives?”
“I’m here to do what needs to be done,” Sentinel says with only minimal sullenness in his reply. “I do what none of the rest of them can, always did, so all the do-gooders could wash their hands of me just like you’re doing now, Zephyr.”
I step past him in a move I’m sure will rankle, snubbing Sentinel for the Enigma and Mistress Snow – and with them Legion, Syzygy, and two liberated supers, one with a defeated bearing to his darkly-clad cat burglar look, the other a once-pretty girl with an amazing metallic hairstyle and a shine to her grimy skin.
“Who are these two?” I ask.
Mistress Snow is the only one to speak.
“Are you really Zephyr? Damn.”
“Gossip columns are gonna love this,” Enigma says.
“H
ey, shut your trap,” I say as I opt for the charm offensive, swinging my gaze on the newcomers. “OK, long faces, what do I call you two?”
The guy pushes off from leaning against a sideboard.
“She’s Golden, and I’m . . . Mr Magnificent.”
“Don’t feel so magnificent now, huh dude?”
The guy flicks his eyes my way to dissemble my tone, which is an admittedly tall order with everyone still playing catch-up with my gender dynamic. Mr Magnificent wears a domino mask wearily, dropping his head again and running gloved fingertips through greasy black 1950s matinee idol hair.
“Yeah,” he says plosively. “Might have to rethink my handle.”
“Atlantic City’s going through the biggest battle in its history,” I say. “I don’t know what your story is, but that sort of drawn-out shit is going to fry anybody.”
“That’s generous of you, Joe,” Seeker says.
I look back and Loren is in full lady space explorer mode, her curvalicious form armored with serrated plates and a full force-visored helm encapsulating hair which – whether by design or some perverse intratextual reference – billows sinuously like something with a life of its own inside the helmet frame with her.
“I’m not being generous,” I say. “I’m trying to lift your spirits . . . because I have to ask you to risk yourselves one more time.”
That makes them stand up straight if nothing else would. Mistress Snow almost looks sober. Sentinel makes himself the center of attention by pounding his wrecking-ball fist into his palm so hard the room nearly judders.
“If you can point me at someone I could hit, hell . . . I might kiss you yet.”
“And I might yet file a statutory rape charge,” I say. “The night’s still young. Suit up and let me talk to Portal about getting us back to England.”
*
MY LITTLE CHAT with Portal fails to resolve any lingering paranoia. He is super-twitchy and can’t stop swallowing his own spit, and it’s not like he wasn’t more’n a touch like this before, but the way he keeps re-adjusting his visor and hitching his utility belt, I’m feeling more and more like he’s not the kind of guy I’d be wanting to ride an elevator with, let alone lead an attack squad onto a stolen nuclear submarine.
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